The use of Visual Basic, one of the most popular computer languages throughout the last fifteen years, is eroding dramatically according to Evans Data’s Fall 2006 North American Development Survey. Overall, developer use of the Visual Basic family has dropped off by 35% since last spring. As expected, developers are finally leaving VB6 and earlier versions, they’re also leaving VB.NET; which is down by 26%. This means Java now holds the market penetration lead at 45% (with developers using Java during some portion of their time), followed by C/C++ at 40%, and C# at 32%.

“Microsoft has dominated languages since the early 90’s but we are seeing much more parity now,” said John Andrews, President, Evans Data. “The use of scripting languages, as well as Java, appear to have limited VB’s future market potential.”

Other findings from the Fall Survey of more than 430 developers in North America:

• Over 70% of developers reported that they will be involved in web related development in the coming year.

• Rich Internet Applications are being written by 80%.

• AJAX grew (by 10%) to reach a total penetration level of 28%.

AJAXWorld Presentation: AJAX by Numbers: A Statistical Snapshot
John F. Andrews is the president of Evans Data Corporation. He has served as CEO of a variety of IT companies, both private and public. Prior to these CEO assignments he was CIO of CSX Corporation, and was also a CIO and division president at several of GTE's operations. John also has extensive experience in market research, having been the CEO of Giga Information Group before it was acquired by Forrester Research.

AJAX is blowing up, and everybody knows it. But in an industry as dynamic as ours, will it be around in the future? Get the information you need about AJAX to make the right decisions today. Get a global view of what is currently going on with technologies that can and will use AJAX. Find out where AJAX fits in the bigger interactive picture. In this session, led by the president of Evans Data Corporation, you will learn what you need to know to build a strategy that can coexist and be profitable with the rest of the development world. The man behind the data, John Andrews, will take you through some key recent Evans findings about the status of AJAX within the software development industry, and will show you how to successfully apply them to your business.

AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 East will be jump-started with our full one-day “AJAXWorld University Boot Camp,” personally led by Web 2.0 and AJAX guru Dion Hinchcliffe.

Earlier this week SYS-CON Events announced the other "charter sponsors" of AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 East, which included; Laszlo Systems (Diamond Sponsor), JackBe (Platinum Sponsor), Google (Gold Sponsor), Nexaweb (Gold Sponsor), Sun Microsystems (Silver Sponsor), Parasoft (Silver Sponsor), Lightstreamer (Exhibitor Plus Sponsor),  IT Mill (Exhibitor Plus Sponsor), and FrogLogic (Exhibitor Plus Sponsor).